Yule presents

A couple of crafty posts to have a break from all the reading and mindfulness!

I didn’t get around to making anywhere near as many presents as I wanted to this year, time ran away with me. I hereby resolve to start making them as of February this year!

However, I did make these lipbalms, which I wrapped using a small square of fabric and coloured embroidery thread. I think that they look lovely all together like this and I have been surprised by how much people like them! As well as the lipbalm inside is a piece of paper saying:

Jen’s Beautiful Balm

For lips, nails and horrid bits!

Yule

For me, this time of year is a chance to turn inward, reflect and prepare for the year ahead. I LOVE this time of year, it makes me happy to draw the curtains at 4pm, light the candles and put on the lights on the tree.

For the first time ever since I left my parents’ home I have a real tree. This is mainly due to my wonderful OH, who encouraged me to make it as I wanted it. Christmas is a big deal for him, as is tradition, so for him to give up his silver tinsel tree was a big deal. I love our little tree and it will sit in the garden when we are done, ready for us next year. It is really small, but perfect for us and our home.

I have been very disciplined and focused on getting my uni essay done right at the start of the holidays, so now I can concentrate on relaxing and being creative, generally turning inwards. So, what do I have planned? Reconnect with my music; write a short story; do some brainstorming around my values; what I want to achieve each day to make me happy; spend some serious time in spiritual reflection. I am greatly looking forward to it!

My ritual was very simple this year, just me, my altar and deep thoughts and gratitude for the wonderful things in my life and the opportunities I have and prayers for others. Solitude and silence. Things I greatly enjoy.

Yuletide blessings to you all

Yule and the darkening of belief

Well, just two days away from Christmas. For my other half this is a really big important family day. I have always been much more Grinch-like about Christmas, but I am finding his enthusiasm infectious. I am really glad to have some time off from being in front of a class, but I am studying like mad to be able to teach four different courses well from January.

I am making lots of music (not an euphemism!) and creating lots of things, including some presents; which I should have done a while ago to be honest.

Yule for me was…a let down to be honest. My grove didn’t get together due to the snow; more to the point the ice we have had recently. My grove meets in the middle of nowhere, down windy roads that haven’t been gritted at all and the decision was made to cancel the ritual for safety. This suited me to be honest. I am really struggling with everything Pagan at the moment, I feel like I have lost my connection and that I am drifting somewhat. I think if I was Christian I would say that I have lost my faith, but as my beliefs don’t feel like faith, but things that I feel and experience on a daily basis; I don’t think that this is right.

I am hoping it is just that I have been so caught up in trying to stifle my emotions at work that this has smothered my connection to the natural and spiritual world and nothing else. That as more and more time elapses from me and the school that this will lift and get better.

There is part of me that worries this is not the case as I am feeling really rather disillusioned with the Pagan world as a whole. The more I see its projection in the world, notably The Pagan Dawn magazine and events I have been to the more I feel that this is so not how I perceive it and worse I get frustrated how it is potrayed. Even the Druid Network doesn’t seem to be resonating with me any more.

Maybe I should just stop reading stuff. Although I am part way through my OBOD course which I started ages ago and I keep meaning to continue with it, but it is like wading through treacle at the moment and does not inspire and spark anything with me. I am fairly sure that this is not the courses fault, but mine.

I really do feel cut off from my spirituality and it is difficult. I continue to mediate, but this is mediation in a Buddhist sense, rather than doing virtual Grove exercises or any Pagan type ones. Like many things, you never know how instrinsic something is to your life until you have lost it. Has this affected any of you? If so, how have you gotten out of it?